Was joined last night by Dave Mansfield from the Fire Fighters Charity which was good, we had a couple of beers and he joined me for the last 2 days of the trek. The landlord of the Sportsman's Inn informed us that the walk from there to Sedbergh was easy and all downhill which we were pleased about after a tough day yesterday. Turned out he was wrong as the first thing we did was head up into the hills.
Managed to navigate our way along the Dales Way despite some lack lustre waymarking and ended up descending to follow the river Dee until we got to the village of Dent.
Here we met the minister from Harrogate Baptist Church, Revd Alan Mair who accompanied us for about 4 miles towards Sedbergh before heading back to Dent to collect his car. It was great to see Alan and that he was able to join us for some of the walk.
After leaving Alan we departed from the river and headed up into the Dentdale hills which was fabulous. It would have been even more so if the weather had been better - we had drizzle on and off all day with a particularly wet spell half way through. But you can't plan the weather so on we plodded. Eventually left the boundary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and over the M6 via a cattle bridge and into some very muddy territory which was a bit of an energy drain.
Have seen many fabulous viaducts over the last few days which continued to be a theme today. I seem to have taken lots of photo's of bridges and viaducts.
With about 7 miles to go it started to become a bit of a trudge with a longing for the finish point to arrive, but this was a long time coming as due to some more poor waymarking we got lost once again adding some extra mileage to our already lengthy day.
Finally got back on track and into Patton Bridge from where our B&B was about a 10 minute walk. Arrived about 7:45 having set off about 9:20 this morning.
Was great to have Dave along today keeping the pace up with his long legs and being the master of gate opening for my weary frame to lumber through. Dave has some choice blisters as his waterproofs were about as much use as a chocolate teapot so we'll need to patch him up ready to go again tomorrow...
Looking forward to tomorrow as it will be a shorter day and we are being joined by Andy Bagot and Steve Humphrey to add to the total of 'jump on jump off' members of this trek.
Total miles walked today: 23.5
Total walking time today: 8h 3mins
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